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Money Focused Podcast
Helping ordinary people, become extraordinary with MONEY! Each weekly episode is packed with actionable tips, expert insights, and real-world advice to help you grow financially and take control of your future. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your wealth, you’ve found the perfect place. Get ready to transform your financial journey, one episode at a time!
Money Focused Podcast
EP 71 - Start a Tax Sale Overages Business to Escape the 9-to-5
In this episode, I talk with Bob Diamond, a successful entrepreneur, attorney, and real estate developer, about the Tax Sale Overages Business. With over 20 years of experience, Bob explains how this business model helps former homeowners recover surplus funds from foreclosure auctions and how it can lead to financial independence with minimal startup costs. Featured on platforms like FOX, NBC, and TLC’s Flip That House, Bob shares his journey from corporate America to real estate investing and provides actionable insights for those looking to build wealth and break free from the traditional nine-to-five grind.
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Welcome back to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and on this episode I'm excited to welcome Mr Bob Diamond to the show. He's a seasoned entrepreneur, a business strategist, an attorney and a developer with over two decades of experience. A developer with over two decades of experience. He's been featured on Fox, nbc, cnbc, npr and also TLC's Flip that House, and he's also the host of the Pathways to Prosperity podcast. You know Bob is here to really walk us through tax sale overages, which is a phenomenal business opportunity and a way where you can help people recover funds and, at the same time, create a lucrative business. So sit back, listen in and enjoy the show.
Speaker 2:So you know, I started out in life as a very like, headed into a straight up career. I graduated from college with a finance and accounting degree and I went to work for a big company called Arthur Anderson, which was one of the old big six accounting firms, and I found, to my surprise that I was a terrible fit for corporate America. You would think this middle class white guy would be right in line for it, and I hated it. I just really hated it. There was backstabbing and at that company at the time they were all proud of the fact that a third of the people left every year. And when a third of the people leave every year, it's probably not a great environment and it certainly wasn't for me. So I left there and I ended up going to law school. They can know it'd be good to sort of improve myself and see what the next step is. No, it'd be good to sort of improve myself and see what the next step is. I went to law school and graduated and I paid for law school through real estate investing, believe it or not. I was buying properties at tax sales and mortgage foreclosure sales, doing a little fix up and reselling them, and it was great because you make lump sums of cash. It was fantastic and I managed to pay for law school that way. And so, strangely enough, I get out of law school and I had a whole bunch of friends and associates who were real estate investors and suddenly they were hiring me to help them out with things. You know like, hey, I got to get zoning or I got to evict a tenant or whatever the case might be, and so I had a really full law practice and that was great. But you know, the law is like working by the hour and great, but the law is like working by the hour and as much as, yes, you make a lot of dollars per hour, it's still dollars per hour. And that wasn't my dream. My dream was to be an entrepreneur with passive income and a business that worked for me, not me working for and in the business every day. So I started to look around and think what could I do? And I started to buy rental properties because I thought, you know, the flipping game is great, like you make lump sums of cash, but it is a grind, like you have to find a new property, fund the new property, fix it up and then sell it, I thought, well, that's not quite right, because I want to have passive income and if I'm really going to work for the future, I got to get rentals. So I started doing that and that was the beginning of my journey, and eventually I found this little niche that I'm operating in now, which is just the craziest thing.
Speaker 2:It's called overages, and the way that it works is when a property is sold at a foreclosure auction, that could be a tax foreclosure because you didn't pay your real estate taxes, or it could be a mortgage foreclosure because you didn't pay your mortgage. When the property sells for more than the amount that's owed, there's extra money left over and that extra money is available for the former homeowner to claim. So if you think about it, it makes sense. Like, let's say that you owe three years worth of taxes and they sell your property. You owe three years worth of taxes and they sell your property.
Speaker 2:If we took an average house in America, which is about $400,000 these days, you probably have about an $8,000 a year tax bill Go over three years past due. It's $24,000 in principle, plus penalties are high. So let's just double it and say you owe $48,000 in taxes. Well, it's only forty eight thousand in taxes against a four hundred thousand dollar property, right? So there's a big spread and, as you probably know, tax sales are competitive. It's not like properties go for nothing. So let's say it goes, even at a big discount. It goes at sixty percent of retail, which should be. I wouldn't agree with me if you got a forty thousand dollar property for two hundred forty thousand. You're like dancing in the streets, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, but let's look at it from the other side, from this overages perspective. The government just collected $260,000. You owe 48,000 in taxes, so that would say there's some money left over, right? Because if they collected 260,000, I'm sorry, 240,000, and you owe 48,000, there's about 190,000 left over.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So, and whose money is that Exactly? Former owner? And the reason it's the former owners is it's the equity in the property. Like you think about it, if you sell your house right, you pay off, say, the mortgage and any other things that are owed, who gets the extra money? Former owner, right, right?
Speaker 2:And this is just a different kind of sale. It's an auction sale, but it's really the same thing where the debt gets paid first, like the mortgage has to get paid off and any other things that you owe. But once that's paid off, the owner is entitled to the rest of the money and it's really other than being obscured by this legal process. It's no different in overages and tax sales happen every day. There are about 3,000 per day according to JPMorgan Chase, who did a study of this market. So about 3,000 properties every day are sold at tax sales and many of them are sold for far more than the debt. And it's really simple If you're talking taxes, we're only three to four years behind in taxes, so it's not enough to mop up all the equity.
Speaker 2:So I would say virtually every time it's what we will call an improved property, then he has a structure on it. There's an overage like every time it's not. Like at tax sales you get some junk properties that are sold, which you may be familiar with. It's from a surveyor's arrow, where there's a little strip of land that just didn't get included in the description or something like that. That's not going to have an overage. That has nothing to do with anything. Where it's an actual building, it will have an overage, like every time, and we're talking large amounts of money at $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. There are many six-figure overages out there these days because houses are worth a lot. It's doubled in price over the past five years, so lots of, and I showed you some lists where we're on this call.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before we jumped on you know. So we did a little run through and in my local area we found six figure overages. You know several of them actually, so it's definitely a strong possibility to see that.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the whole business. It's a really interesting little business. So what you do is you get the list. They're publicly available, not difficult to get, just like I showed you, we got in about a minute, I think, and then you get the contact information for the owner. That's pretty simple online research. We did that with one that was a corporation and that took two minutes, maybe three maximum. That gave us the owner of the corporation and this is a mom and pop, which is very typical because it's typically, you know, like husband and wife trying to do something in real estate. It falls apart, they lose the property and, you know, they don't know there's money left over, and that's part of the key to this business. People really don't know that there could be any money left over because they think, oh, they meaning the government or the mortgage company sold my house. So, because they think, oh, they meaning the government or the mortgage company sold my house. So, you know, I guess they keep the money because that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either that or you know. They're just not familiar with the fact that, like you mentioned, even though the home is being sold at a discount, it's still a premium based upon the legal and tax amount is yeah. So I think people at that point they just feel like they're being stripped of it and you know, it's probably might be embarrassing to them. They just, you know, trying to figure out some other things, other factors in their life, and because I can't see someone willingly, you know, letting this money sit, and that's where you know the folks that take part in your program and start a business can actually come in and help and save a lot of people from this financial windfall.
Speaker 2:That's. People just don't know it and I have to tell you a somewhat embarrassing story. So so here's my history, like mathematically speaking. So I started learning how to buy properties at tax sale in 1989. So a long time ago, like some dinosaur age and I was buying properties. And then I switched to buying mortgage foreclosure auctions because there weren't, frankly, nicer properties at mortgage auctions and sometimes the tax sale properties are pretty run down and in the fix and flip business I was better off in better neighborhoods and I got a law school in 1993. So that's sort of my history. And I was still buying, as I said. I paid for law school in 1993. So that's sort of my history. And I was still buying, as I said, I paid for law school through real estate investing. So I was still buying properties actively.
Speaker 2:I didn't know a thing about overages not a thing. It wasn't until 2005, 10 years later, after I graduated from law school. It wasn't until then that I even became aware of overages and at that point I'd been to hundreds of tax and mortgage foreclosure auctions, watched millions and millions of dollars get created and it never occurred to me. So I would go to an auction. I'm all excited, I'm prepared to bid on a bunch of properties. Hopefully I'd get a property or two and then I'd run off and start my process of rehabbing it and getting it set to sell. What I didn't think about is oh, the county just sold 50 properties today. I wonder what they do with all that money. They collected $5 million. What do they do with it? I didn't think about it because it has nothing to do with me, so I never gave it a thought.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until 2005 when one of my clients came into my office and he had lost a property at a tax sale. He was a small developer and he said I want to try to get this property back. He said I was in a bad financial spot so I let it go, but I'd like to get that property back. It's just some raw land. So as an attorney, you look at these things and say well, is there a technical defect in the sale? They can't prove that. They notified the person or some T that's not crossed, or I that's not dotted. So I said to my client let me go look at the file, so let's see what I can do. So I looked at the file and everything was in place Like he had gotten notice of the sale. He had signed for the certified mail. You know about it. I'm like you're done, there's nothing I can do here. But I said to him. I said you know one interesting thing. I said you owed a couple thousand dollars in the property in taxes and it sold for $22,000 at the sale. And I said I think, just in thinking about it, that you should be able to get that extra money back because they needed the money to pay the debt. But the money over and above that I think you should get. And I said I don't like it. Great, so it just made sense. So I went down this is in Philadelphia, pennsylvania, where I'm from and I went to the sheriff's office who holds the sales and I said, hey, there's some extra money here, can I have it back for my client? And we went back and forth for three or four months because I guess apparently no one was even trying to get any extra money back. And finally they just cut me a check because they're like, yeah, it makes sense, we don't need the extra money. And here you go, here's a check. And I can also tell you at that point didn't think of it as a business, just a client matter that I handled successfully. But again, my client at that point about $9,000 back. He was happy, surprised, and it's like back. He was happy, surprised and it's like at least it's better than nothing.
Speaker 2:So fast forward a couple of years and I had another client named Rick Dawson who I was doing tax lien investing with and I was doing some real estate work for him, and he started telling me about this overages business. And I said what's an overages business? And he said, well, I get these lists of monies that are left over from tax sales and then I contact the people, tell them there's a windfall they could get and for a percentage I go get the money for them. And I was like, what list are you talking about? And he showed me a list, like I showed you a list of monies left over from the sale. And I said, well, how do you find the people? So it's pretty easy because I just go online and all the information's online, like their Facebook account, even these days, their cell phone number and all. And I said that's pretty easy. I said then, what do you do? And he said, well, I pick up the phone and I call them and I send them letters saying if they want to get this extra money, and so he kind of coached me on that. I'm like that's just such a cool business.
Speaker 2:You get to help people who are just absolutely like left out, kicked out to the streets. Basically, yeah, pretty much payments. You need money for fix up, you just need cash. And long-term rental properties are not great at throwing off large amounts of cash, especially at the beginning. They're more great at taking cash up and you need the down payment. You need all that stuff.
Speaker 2:So I thought I can marry these two businesses together where I have the overage, that's making lump sums of cash, and then the rental properties, which is just passive income, because most months of my rental properties I don't have to do anything. And the marriage of those two businesses is magical because you could do things like you buy a nice rental property, say in a little bit better neighborhood, so you get these lump sums of cash and you could pay down that mortgage. And if there's one thing I know as much as I'm a lawyer, not a mathematician pay down that mortgage. And if there's one thing I know as much as I'm a lawyer, not a mathematician free and clear properties, really cash flow, absolutely, and normally it takes years to get a property to that point as a free and clear property.
Speaker 2:So in this you can accelerate that to a really short time period and I would say for most people, if you had 10 free and clear, middle-class rental properties, you could retire. You, you're gold. You could do nothing else. Of course you would, because you continue to buy properties, but you wouldn't have to right right, because you're probably making 10 to 15 000 a month, depending on your tax bill and all stuff, before you got up out of bed and right right and you'd have net worth, because these days you're probably talking about properties that are worth at least a couple million dollars, three or four million. So if you ever wanted to cash out, you could just sell them and walk away. A multimillionaire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, be in great shape. Yeah, no, I think you know the this overage business. It sounds exciting, you know. It also sounds like it's a. It's not a high amount to enter the business, you know at all. You know. So let's talk about for, for folks who are, who are that have a nine to five, that might be potentially be looking to escape that rat race, like you did when you said, hey, this is not for me, how can an overage business be a meal ticket for them in that?
Speaker 2:way. It's perfect for that because it responds really well to working on the side. You do have to spend a couple hours a week on it, but as long as you focus on the right thing, which is reaching out to potential claimants claimants who we call the person owed the money and you just say to them hey Fred, there's a big windfall that you can get. My company has found this money with your name on it. Our business is that we go and get that money. If it works out, we get a percentage. If it works out, we get a percentage. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't cost you a penny. I don't need a deposit. I don't need any money from you. I just need permission to go pursue this and we're off and I will pursue it like a hungry dog after a rabbit. I'll be after it. And it's a great pitch because you're not asking them to put up money. You don't need their bank account, you don't need their social security number, because these are real estate taxes, not personal income taxes. You really just need them to meet with a notary for 15 minutes to check their ID and make sure you got the right person and just sign the papers, and a couple of the papers are notarized, and so their whole commitment is spend 15 minutes giving you written permission to go do this and just verifying you have the right person. That's all you need from them. That being said, this comes across the first time you call someone as oh, this must be a scam, because this sounds too good to be true. Yeah, it does sound too good to be true, but sometimes things are true, and what I reiterate to people is we're not asking you for money. We're not asking for your credit card or your bank account information. I just need your written permission to go do this and I need to just verify that I've got the right person, because I can't get the money for the wrong person. So just meet with a notary for 15 minutes and we'll make sure everything's legitimate and you're good.
Speaker 2:The other thing you have to remember because we think of it from our side as entrepreneurs like well, why would anybody believe me? These folks are really in a bad financial shape. You know they're in such bad financial shape. They lost their property, most likely their home to tax foreclosure or mortgage foreclosure, and that just tells you they're hurting. It's not a mystery. They're hurting financially, so it's really appealing to want to believe you. They have a magnetic draw that they want to believe you, but they're a little scared. So the answer to that by the way, just be nice to them.
Speaker 2:This isn't like a boiler room stock sale. You got the money that's going up this afternoon. You got to wire money. Now. It's nothing like that.
Speaker 2:Or else, yeah, or else and this is you know, you have, in most places, three years or so to claim the money. Some places, like we talked about early five years in your state, but mostly it's around three years. So this isn't something where you have to like get it done by tomorrow. There's time. At the same time, you don't want to leave money that belongs to you sitting out there because it might be appealing for someone else to try to steal it or something. But you don't have to put that pressure on them. It just don't. It's not.
Speaker 2:They've already been through enough. You sort of alluded to it earlier. These people have been through it and it's really emotionally difficult. They are embarrassed. Like you said earlier, they're traumatized, because losing your house and getting kicked out on the streets by the sheriff is traumatic stuff, and so just be nice to them as long as you can be nice to them and patient, you'll do fine. Now will everybody say, yes, absolutely not, there's. No, it's just people. You can't make them do what's good for them. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. But all you're investing is a phone call or a stamp to send them a letter. It's just not a big investment. And just remember some will, some won't. You do the best that you can, but you can't help everybody. And that's okay. It's just life, it's the way it is Right, right.
Speaker 1:know some of the economic conditions that we're facing right now. You know, with inflation. You know maybe a new government in place. You know how does how do these impact the overages business overall. Like is this a good time?
Speaker 2:Yes, hugely more lucrative. And a couple of things are going on. The first thing is it is hard economic times, especially for people at the bottom, because I know I came into Costco the other day and somehow I spent $411 and I barely picked anything up, like it all fit in a box, basically, and I was like that's a lot of money. And for me it's an observation, like I do well financially, it doesn't mean that I switch what I buy. But for people who are struggling, counting every dollar, it's a huge difference Because they tell us oh, inflation's tame. I'm like nonsense. That bill of Costco would have been $300 last year, not $400. And I know that because it's just, I had my car repaired the other day. It had, for whatever weird reason, the side airbags went off. I had no idea why, but they did. It was $9,000 in repairs and I was just like falling over in shock and all it did was replace the side curtain, airbags and some associative stuff. I'm like that is a lot of money, it was a whole lot. And you know, again for me, again for me, I just write the check and it's not a big deal. But for people at the bottom, which are the people losing houses to tax sales. It is a catastrophe, and more people are losing their houses to tax sale, more people are losing their houses to foreclosure auctions and it's just become many more deals.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that's going on. That's really interesting that these two things happen at once. Housing prices have pretty much doubled within the past five years. If you look, five years ago houses were about $225,000. And today the latest number I saw from Federal Reserve was $428,000. So it's approximately doubling and what that means is that houses sell for a lot more money at auctions, both mortgage foreclosure and tax foreclosure, which means there's a much bigger overage available, and we were looking at the overages. We're looking at $70,000 deals, $80,000 deals. I think we looked at $186,000 deal. I don't think you notice. There are two deals over a million dollars on that list.
Speaker 1:I was so excited at the six figure I probably didn't even see the million.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a million. That's the first I've seen of that. By the way, this is a new thing that's coming up where we're seeing deals on an irregular basis. It's not regular, but we're seeing deals from time to time now over a million dollars, which I've never seen before, and it's just a function of the property values going up, so people pay more at the sale and it's creating these huge slumps of money that makes it far more lucrative than it used to be. It was always good, but now it's amazing.
Speaker 2:And the other thing not to overload everybody, but the other thing that happened there was a Supreme Court case last year called Tyler versus Hennepin County, and what the case says in summary is that when a county forecloses on a property for taxes, they have to make the extra money available for the former owner to claim. There used to be some states, like Colorado and New York State and a couple others, that would sell your house and keep the change, which is just not so, and now all of them are being forced to revise their laws and make the overages money available. So we're getting more and more states coming online and every month, literally, there's a new state that comes online. So it's making it massively more lucrative, because it's just more states. There's more overages, deals to do, and I think of this business as helping people and making money. This isn't just a one-way street. We're bringing people windfall who really need it.
Speaker 1:And you know, just to hammer that down, that point for anybody who's listening and not connecting the dots you can work overages in any state, right? You know, it doesn't have to be your home state. Now there are some states that you recommend Fortunately I've been one of those but if let's just say I did live in Colorado, you wouldn't say, hey, moses, this is not a good business for you. You would just say, hey, what would you think about going to Georgia?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're just picking up the phone and it's. I think it's rapidly going to become all 50 states. There's another case that just came out that they made it. There's some states where they have different process, where you buy a tax lien and if it's not paid off, they just give you the property, and there's a brand new Supreme Court case that just happened that basically said they can't do that anymore. So I expect we're going to see all 50 states online. Illinois was the biggest example of that, where they would just you'd buy the lien and then if they didn't pay it off, then you would get the property, and so people would get properties for like a year's worth of taxes, which is nuts. But that's also going to change because that case which, by the way, was a surprise to me I saw that I couldn't believe that a really creative lawyer figured that one out.
Speaker 2:I believe all 50 states will be online. Right now we recommend 22 states, but I think we're going to be at 50 states very quickly because it's just the US Supreme Court has told these states stop sticking it to people, Keep on this money. Yeah, this is not fair, it's not right, and you're talking about the people who can least afford to lose the money. I mean, I understand the arguments about well, they're really rich, have tons of money and really poor, really broke, so we need to take more from the very rich. I can understand that at least. What I don't understand is hey, we have the poorest of the poor, let's fleece them for every penny of equity in their property, which is probably the only thing they own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, this is not a rich, this is not a taken from the rich at all. You know this is, even if this is a person that you know was affluent at one point. They obviously are not now, because it wouldn't let a property go for just taxes, because you wouldn't let a property go for just taxes. So I think it's, I hope that they change that, because you know, taking people to excess money is just not fair.
Speaker 2:I think it's a done deal, because the Tyler versus Hennepin County case, which is a Minnesota case that was the first one that said nationwide you cannot sell the property and keep any extra. This new case what that's changing is a different system where they just say buy the tax lien and if they don't pay you off, you can just have the property. They basically just told the states that you can't do that either, so they're going to shift to an auction system. They're going to have to. So that's going to bring all the other states online, and we already have. I'll just give you some insight into our business.
Speaker 2:So I'm in the business of overages Right now. We have a database that we keep that we cover about 15 states. In our database we have it's 14,700 leads right now that are live and claimable and sufficient in size for us to bother with, and $350 million worth of money's available. And that's only 15 states. I don't collect more than that because I can't even cover that many leads and it's not possible to cover that many. So there's opportunity for everybody, really ample opportunity, and the thing you have to do to succeed in this business is you need to reach out to people. It's like where people are not doing it, it's just they're not doing the reach out and I'm willing to do the work for a percentage. If you're willing to do that, you can be successful in this business. If you're not willing to do that, then this business is not for you. It's not passive, like your rental income, it's active.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us a little bit about how you actually get paid.
Speaker 2:What is?
Speaker 1:that finder's fee and what someone could potentially make.
Speaker 2:So we charge 30% to 40%. That's our percentage. I modeled that after what contingent fee attorneys do. So I think 30% to 40% is a fair representation of the value that you bring, meaning this is money they'll never know about without you. It's just going to be forfeited to the government. You're doing the effort of finding the money, finding them, reaching out and then doing the work. It's not that much work, honestly. It's typically about eight hours worth of work, but the work really is finding leads, getting their contact information, which is called skip tracing, and then calling them. That's where your effort is. I think that the value that you bring is worth 30% to 40%. So our model is 30% to 40%. That being said, it is a free country. You can charge what you want, but I think 30% to 40% works. It's a number that you can sell. It's a number that works.
Speaker 2:Now, if I got one of those million-dollar claims, I would do it for 10% all day. Give me 100 grand for eight hours worth of work. I'm in. But for your normal claim which I would say normal claim to me is $50,000 to $80,000 these days, with lots of ones bigger, but let's say we're talking about a $50,000 claim. You're talking about $15,000 to $20,000 in compensation, which is great money. Yes, and it's a very low-cost business when you mentioned. It doesn't cost a lot of money to start. It's a service business. You don't need an office, you need a telephone and I think everybody here has a telephone and you need the internet connection to get the leads and do the research. Just understand some people will, some people won't. You can't change everybody's minds. You can't help everybody, but the ones that you do help. You're going to make a ton of money on and you can do this Like you're asking. Can I do it on the side? Absolutely, because when you're calling in evenings and weekends, guess when people that work are home Evenings and weekends?
Speaker 1:Evenings and weekends, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's just a matter of reaching out to people and saying, hey, I found this money. Would you be interested and just be kind to them because they have been through it, and don't worry if they bark a little bit when you first call Most people don't, but some do and just say I understand where you're coming from. Maybe you've been through a tough time I have been too or whatever. You want to share with them and just don't worry about it because you know, at the end of the day, if they work with you, they're going to be so happy. And let me answer your question. I'm going to be like a politician, answer a different question.
Speaker 2:So what happens is you turn in the claim and the county is going to mail you the check. They mail you the check, you deposit it into your business account, keep your portion and send their portion onto them. So it's really simple. So part of our signup process is setting that up as the procedure. That way we don't need to worry about if they decided not to pay you or something, because the money comes to your business account, so it dumps in your business account for them, their balance, and if anybody ever fusses about it which honestly they rarely do, because just between you and me, they don't ever believe they're getting any money anyway. But for the odd duck that does say, well, how do I know you're not going to steal my money that, by the way, I don't even believe you have, but that's why it doesn't come up.
Speaker 1:We'll just say, well, look, we'll work with a local attorney who can hold escrow on the money and just do that. It's not a big deal, cost you a couple hundred bucks and it's nothing, and so really straightforward. That's the um, uh, the the part, because you had noted that you know we're going to your account. So you're talking about the um, the limited power of attorney, that the, the motor, the notary, would help them sign correct. So, yeah, okay, the limited power of attorney, because I notary would help them sign Correct. So, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And limited power of attorney. I know that can sound scary, but if you actually read it you'd probably write it for me because you have the course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I do, for everyone who's listening. I recently purchased Bob's course and I'm going to ask him to really talk us through that and close this out, but I'm excited to get started because it's an interesting business. So, and I'll keep you updated.
Speaker 2:It is. It is such a great business. The thing I like the most about it, I mean, I love making money. That's great, but you can make money in a lot of different ways, right, it's not. That's not the hard thing. The hard thing is actually doing.
Speaker 2:But what I really love about it is you take people that are just flat on their back financially. They're kind of thrown to the curb, kicked out of their house, and you come along as a stranger that at first they don't believe you. But you work with them and establish some rapport and so I can understand where you're coming from. I wouldn't believe me either, necessarily, but I might try it because it doesn't cost me anything. Think about that. And what do you have to lose? Just give it a shot. And then you get them this big fat check and it's really a life changer for them.
Speaker 2:I mean, when you get someone who's flat broke and you get them a check of $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 that they had no idea was coming, we get people who are literally homeless back into housing again. We get people who are depressed and distressed and unhappy and feeling bad, like you know what? I got my down payment back on my house that I gave. So I'll just think like I rented the house for all those years. You could think of it that way.
Speaker 2:It's a game changer and I just like that because in the real estate investing, especially when I was buying, like pre-foreclosures I found it hard to say to people and feel good about it yeah, mrs Smith, I can give you what would turn out to be, say, 60% of the value of their house because I needed to build a margin for repairs, renovations and cost overruns. It's hard to feel great. I mean, I did it because that's the math. But I'd feel like they, really like I'd feel great about paying 90% of the value. But you can't do it because the math doesn't work and this is different. You're truly like Santa Claus. Or sometimes we talk about the Robin Hood business. You're like Robin Hood, where you go get the money from the sheriff of Nottingham or sheriff of wherever you're talking about, and recharge it to people that it's being taken from. That's a good feeling.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it so I can again pay down some of my mortgages, so I can have some free and clear and live in Puerto Rico, like you, with all this passive income.
Speaker 2:It's so funny when we think about that paying down things I'm sure you're maybe you're familiar out there with like amortization schedules and like in the early years of a mortgage, like two pennies goes to principal and 98 pennies goes to interest. If you just literally make some early payments, all of a sudden, like your 30 year mortgage is like a 12-year mortgage and then it's a five-year mortgage and then it's paid off. It's crazy how you get rich so much faster. And there's this saying that I just heard the other day I'll share with you. I think it was great.
Speaker 2:It was from Dan Kennedy, one of my favorite marketing guys. He said money loves speed, wealth loves time and poverty loves indecision. And I was like that is so great and and this is about money it's like you get on the phone, call people and what you're talking about with investment properties as wealth. So that really likes time, because it's like time to pay down the debt. But you accelerate time when you throw cash into that mortgage balance. You just right and like we were talking about earlier, I mean I think someone with 10 free and clear rental properties of like, say, middle class rental properties is basically set for life, like you'll be making 10 to 15 grand a month before you get out of bed and you'll still work from there and just plus and plus and plus it. But I don't think it takes more than that to have complete financial freedom.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree. Financial freedom, I agree, I agree. So for the folks who are listening or watching and they're ready to get started, talk to us a little bit about your program and you know next steps for them to engage with you and your team.
Speaker 2:So we have a training program which teaches you everything you need to know, gives you all the forms, like the power of attorney that you're talking about, moses, and all the contracts that you need, plus support. If you have an issue, you can give us a call or send us an email. We're very dedicated to doing that, because it's not. I know that people have questions and it'll stop you if you don't have someone to answer it. So we answer questions and help you out. So we answer questions and help you out. The best way to find out all the details about it is. I have a longer presentation it's like 90 minutes where I really go through the business in detail and my goal with that is to help you figure out if it's right for you and I think, as a preliminary to that, what I would say.
Speaker 2:The person that would think about doing this business, it's someone who wants to make money, someone who has a couple hours a week they could spend on the settling. Just even get three or four hours a week and get it started and start getting your first deals and getting your first money in the door and, most importantly, either you're willing to make the calls to people and say hey, you're owed this money, would you be interested in working with me? Or if they don't want to do it, they're willing to get someone else with maybe some telephone sales experience on a commission basis to do it for them. That's the part of the business where when people succeed, they're doing it, and when they don't succeed, then that's the part they're not doing. So that's to me the inflection point. You have to be willing to, either yourself or through someone else, reach out to people because they don't know about the money and you need a customer to make some money yourself. So that's the key thing.
Speaker 2:Other than that, it's very low cost, I would say, overall, to get the business started. If you have a total budget for education and startup costs like equipment and things like that, of $2,000, you're fine. It's not a fortune, it doesn't cost a lot. It's really the elbow grease you have to be willing to just learn a little bit and get started. It's not nothing, but it takes money to get anything started. But I also like about this business the operating costs are just nominal For month to month, really what you're going to have. Let's assume you have a phone, because you don't need to get a phone. You have an internet connection, so that's nothing Really. The month-to-month cost is just a skip tracing service, which is a service that helps you get the contact information for people about $30 a month. So you can operate a whole business for $30 a month and the deals as I said are typically the core of our deals are $50,000 to $80,000. So you're talking about a minimum of $15,000 to $20,000 per deal in profit.
Speaker 1:If you did one deal a month, you'd be crushing it $120,000 to $180,000 a year. That's almost like the 10 free and clear homes It'd be just like an appreciation.
Speaker 2:But as far as your income, let's say you took that money and let's say you made $120,000 and no, I'll take 60,000 and put it into my mortgages. I think at a very short time you'd have a bunch of pretty clear houses Because again, as soon as you put a big principal payment down, all of a sudden your monthly mortgage payment goes way more to principal than interest and I think you could realistically make like a five-year plan to retire as a multi-millionaire. You could do it a lot less than that, but just very conservatively retire as a multi-millionaire with monthly income 10 to 15 grand a month before you get out of bed. I think that's easy to do. I think it's not. You have to do it, but it's not hard. You don't need to like invent the next semiconductor or battery technology or something, or AI robot.
Speaker 2:You just have to make some calls, that's your whole.
Speaker 1:Helping people along the way. Yeah, so that's the cool part.
Speaker 2:What could be better than that? That's just Not much. You're helping people who just have no friends. Because the other thing I can tell you is that to a person, all of these people lose their house at tax sale. When they were about to lose the house, they called up their friends and their families and said, hey, I need $10,000 to save my house, Could you help me? And they didn't get the money, For whatever reason. They didn't get the money and so they're feeling pretty depressed and distressed and friendless. And when you're broke, you don't have as many friends. When you're throwing parties and everything's great, everybody comes over for the tailgate, but when you're broke, not as many, Even if people invite you.
Speaker 2:I had one of my clients said I used to have a normal life. My friends would invite me out to go to a concert or to dinner and it was great, We'd go out and be social, and so I got to the point where I was so broke that I didn't even have the money to pay for a ticket or pay for dinner. So I didn't go out anymore and I lost my friends and I'm like that is just sad. And with her we helped her out and today her whole story is completely different Today. She has a rental but a townhouse she lives in, she has regular income, she has a car and her life's back together again. And it was not a Christmas that goes by. They don't get a note from her saying I'm just thinking of you, Bob, how are you doing? How's the wife? And thank you so much. You know I'd be down on the streets without you and she would be. She was homeless and she would have frozen to death in Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, in Hartford.
Speaker 2:All we did was did our job and it's obviously a longer story because, for her, when we helped her and I got her specifically $32,000, which got her out of the homeless shelter. But it also helped her to get some legal help. She needed to get her pension going, because there was an issue with that. To get disability payments going, because there was an issue with that. To get disability payments going, because there was an issue with that, and so we got her some legal help to fix all that. So she needed a couple of grand, but when you don't have a couple of grand it's like all the money in the world. So she got all that straightened out.
Speaker 2:So today she has a pension, she has social security, disability coming in and, like she said to me, she said I'm not rich, but I, you know, my life is fine. She's like I don't live in a homeless shelter, I'm not being pushed out on the streets, and it's a really great business to to have the privilege of being a part of those stories. And no, I love to make money, I love to support my family, but I like I just enjoy in this business and I'm helping people in a really concrete, tangible way who've been like kicked to the curb and I probably have too much of a soft spot for that, but I do.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's great, great business. So how can people contact you? You know you have a website, social media. You want to call out.
Speaker 2:The easiest thing to do just go to Learn From Bob. It's just a website, wwwlearnfrombobcom, and there you can register. It's just you put in your email and name and we'll send you an invitation to a 90 minute presentation where I really go into business in detail, show you what's involved. It's a pretty straightforward business but obviously everything has details. Everything has has things to it. I've given you the highlight tour, but there's more stuff to give you and I gave it to you in that format. And then your job is decide hey, is this for me At the end of that presentation.
Speaker 2:If you want to talk to someone or office phone numbers there, you can just give a call and talk to Christine or Mike or one of the other folks. And you've interacted with Mike Moses, because when you go into support, that's Mike Vetrano, that's our guy, that's head of support. You can talk to one of them, ask them questions, tell them about your situation and, if it's suitable to you, give it a try. It's not an expensive business to try and even with one deal, you'd more than cash out what you invested in it. And You'd more than cash out what you invested in it. And you know, as I say to people, you'll find out if it's really for you. At that point You'll have made some money, you'll learn, and you know in life, as long as we're moving forward, we're kind of like a pool ball. We can like bounce off there and pivot and end up getting a ball in anyway, but if you don't hit the ball you can't score.
Speaker 1:Just can't, exactly, exactly, you know, invest in yourself. You know. So if, if, if you're making this investment into starting this business and you make, you know, your money back when your first deal, hey, that's still an investment. You know the ROI is there, you've made your money back and more, and then you can. We didn't talk about it much, I don't want to keep extending it, but you know you can essentially then use a VA to do a lot of that work and we do, and part of what we give you with the course is a VA guide that shows you how we use our VAs.
Speaker 2:So I have virtual assistants and most people probably know what a VA is, but just in case you don't, it's a person who works typically overseas, like from the Philippines or one of those places. Our Filipino virtual assistants work for about $6 an hour. They get the list, they get the contact information for the people we need to call. And then I have outsourced salespeople here in the States that pick up the phone and call people and say, hey, there's this money we found. Would you be interested in working with us? They make the calls and then, when the person says yes, then I have a team that puts together the paperwork. It's not particularly hard to put together. They put together the paperwork, they send it out with a notary, gets signed, my team gets it back, they submit it to the county and typically four or five, six months later we get a check and then we split up the money, give the person who lost the property their portion, keep our portion, and it's a pipeline business. You keep filling your pipeline and you can pretty much predict how much money you're going to make. I mean just based on, if you sign up $50,000 this month, then you've pretty much lined up a $15,000 to $20,000 paycheck for five or six months down the road. It takes a while. Counties don't move that quickly. So the way I think about it, I still have my pipeline. I try to put a couple deals. If I were you, I'd try to put a couple deals a month under contract and after five or six months, all of a sudden you're getting a couple checks a month and, and you know, after five or six months all of a sudden you're getting a couple checks a month. And it's just this flow.
Speaker 2:It was a restaurant and shared office space. The restaurant survived the pandemic. Shared office space never came back. I'm like 40% vacant and so I'm having to redevelop the property and I'm putting together a plan for that. I've got a plan. It's great. It takes about $400,000 to do the renovations I have to do to repurpose the building. But in the meanwhile I'm negative cash flow, about $15,000 a month. So guess who has to put the $15,000 a month in to support the building Me.
Speaker 1:You.
Speaker 2:And I've got a couple million dollars in loans. They're all personally guaranteed, so I need to do it In the meanwhile. How do I do that? Well, I have an overages business where I can do that without draining my savings or doing anything else. I don't like it. I'd love to have that thing fixed, but it's going to take a year to fix that building Meaning to find a new purpose, which I did renovate it and they get the new purpose filled up and running. But you got to get from here to there, and so this is a great business to supply the cash that you need.
Speaker 2:I also think if you're trying to escape the nine to five which I did, the key to it is get a side hustle going like this so that you replace your job income before you give notice at work, because once you're making, like say, you're making, you know the over. Just say, making 10 grand a month in overages, so it's 120 000 a year if that meets your your bills that you have to pay. It's no stress to go say goodbye to your boss. Hey, it's been great being here, I loved it, oh lovely. But I, you know I'm doing some other things and I'm off. That's no strap that's. That's a great, great plan, and especially if you have a full pipeline at that point, really, look did I got, look did I get you know, $500,000 worth of deals in the pipeline. So you know, that's $100,000, $150,000 a year. I saw $150,000 in revenue coming in. That's just on top of the money I'm already making. It's not stressful to leave your nine to five at that point.
Speaker 1:I'm motivated, you know I want to get a million in the pipeline. Let's do that.
Speaker 2:If you think about it. So we looked at that list. Right, that list had I'm just going off memory 186,000. We looked at 186,000, 70,000, 80,000. So let's say between the three of those, that's 300,000. Literally, if you could get like 10 deals under contract, there's your million bucks under contract. There we go, there we go. So it's feasible. It's just the other thing I would say I gave you that saying money loves speed, wealth loves time and poverty loves indecision. Go get them under contract and start the timer running, because once those things are in the hopper you turn them into the county, there's not really much else to do. It's like waiting for your income tax refund. It doesn't matter if you call the irs 53 times. They're going to give you a reason when you get it right and when you get and they do it.
Speaker 2:it's not, you know, these counties are not trying to keep your money. It's just that behind the scenes they're bureaucracies. They have a bunch of policies and procedures to follow. They follow it, they pay out the money and just assume that it's between four and six months. Sometimes it's shorter, but I just assume that because I'm always conservative in my planning. And once you start working in a couple of counties which is all you need to work then you'll get to know the people what their process is, how fast they work. But I'm just telling you as a generic, four to six months is the typical time I expect. So literally, if you fill up, say you put a million dollars under contract the next three months, I would say six to nine months from now, you're talking about getting, let's see,000 to $400,000 out in revenue.
Speaker 1:That's real money. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm on it. I am on it, bob.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much. You get out of your own way, because it's easy for us to get in our own way or like, oh, they're going to think I'm a scammer or think all the bad things that you think could happen, that generally never, will ever happen. But we think of those things. Just get out of your own head and think about them. Think about that person that needs your help, that has been thrown to the streets and you're their lifeline and that works.
Speaker 1:That works Well. Thank you so much, Bob. I'm going to go ahead and put your website in the episode notes. Excellent, so if you want us watching or listening, make sure that you check Bob out. He said it's a 90-minute webinar or 90-minute video.
Speaker 2:Approximately, and you can go through the first 35 or 40 minutes and you'll definitely know whether this is for you or not for sure, yes. And after that I just get into more details because if you're really interested in a business, you really do want to know the details. So I just take you through the details of, like, skip trace and getting people, getting lifts and all that stuff, because I think that in making a decision about something to pursue, my best customer is someone who's informed to getting into it, knowing what they're getting into, like I've been telling you today, your challenge here is just getting past the skepticism. That's what it is. The rest of it's pretty straightforward. Do I need to educate you? Yes, I need to tell you the best states to work in, the best kinds of deals, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, the like, the leverage point, is making calls, reaching out to people, understanding it's. It's like playing baseball. You know the best baseball players in the world. They'll get a hit three to four times out of bat. Right, they get up 10 times. They'll get. If they get like four, four hits per 10 times a bat, they're literally in the all-star game and the hall of fame and in overages you can be in your own all-star game in Hall of Fame, at least with your family, for the money you're making. If you could hit three or four times you would be a superstar. Even if you only hit one out of 10, you will do great. Because again we saw that. Let's say you get these $70,000, $80,000 deals. You get one out of 10. You talk to 10 people and you got one of them to sign up and that's going to result in a payday somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000. Would you talk to 10 people to make $30,000?
Speaker 1:All day. All day Exactly. Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2:I love the business and, like I said, there are lots of reasons I love it, ones I'd share with you that may resonate Low startup costs, low operating costs. You can do it on the side, make sure it's working for you, get some money in the bank before you quit whatever else you're doing to pay your bills like managing everything in life to it. You do need to have a couple hours a week for it, like three or four hours a week is is fine, but you got to work it. You got to, and that those three to four hours, you should primarily be reaching out to people.
Speaker 1:And it's. It'd be hard pressure for someone to say they don't have three, four hours a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll do it, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean it's pretty much going to be up to you, you know, and putting that work in to get on the phone and you know, because it's still a process, but you know it's not for everyone. I know when I watch, you know, bob's video I mean my wife and I we were our jaw dropped within 10, 15 minutes. I know he's saying 30 minutes, so we were so. So I hope everyone takes the time to listen and watch. They're very thorough, you know they're. They're they're going to really break it down piece by piece with all the details and it's really kind of up to you at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I try, I try to. I think of treating people like I'd want to be treated Like. I just want to know what's the deal with this business, what are the challenges, what's the opportunity. And so when I do a presentation, I'm just trying to think what would I want to know if I were in that person's shoes? And I'll tell you, if I had known about this business when I started in foreclosure investing, I would have retired. I'm not retired, but I would have been able to retire because I could retire. Now I'm just not interested in retiring Years earlier because I used to go to the auctions and there was one guy named Newman this is back when Seinfeld was big and Newman was like this funny character on Seinfeld and the dude.
Speaker 2:He would totally bid at the auction just because I was bidding and we'd get so mad at him because he seemed to have endless amounts of money and I'd bid and just want to chase me away and so he'd always bid when I did and I was like I just hated Newman.
Speaker 2:And I realized that today, knowing what I know now, I love Newman Because that dude is just going throwing cash into the bucket that I can go and get his overages money. I'm like Newman, can I get you a line of credit with a bank Because I want you to spend millions every month? And I just realized what used to frustrate me was just this huge opportunity that I couldn't take advantage of because I didn't know about it, no other reason. And it's just, it's this crazy feel good business that the one thing you have to do is just call people, talk to them, be willing to do that and just understand everybody won't sign up, even though you do your best to help people. It's like teenagers. You see a teenager going down the wrong path, you're like no stop, let me help you. Sometimes a teenager just won't listen.
Speaker 1:You do the best you can in life.
Speaker 2:That's what I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Thank you so much, bob. Like I said all your information me in the show notes I just really appreciate your time, your passion for the business and the passion for helping people. It's really clear. That's why we jumped in and joined your program. So I'm looking forward to sharing my success stories with you and also for the audience to tap in and start their journey.
Speaker 2:Thanks Moses, thanks for having me, and I just I want to wish you the best of luck and you know we're here to support you when you're getting your deals under contract and getting them through. And I love to see checks with like happy clients, like I'm picturing you with a nice big check. Say, I just got $80,000, meaning for someone else, and they got 50, I got 30. I can't believe this just happened and that's what's out there. So thank you, thanks for having me and look forward to seeing everybody else in the presentation.
